Oliver’s Gift: The Lane Cove Photographer Who Never Charges Grieving Parents

We’re told not to share a pregnancy until we’re past the first trimester. The risk of miscarriage is higher in those first 12 weeks, and nobody wants to have to un-tell everyone.

There is some logic to that. But it also means that if you do lose a baby, you grieve on your own. No one knows why you’re so sad. No one knows to hug you.

It’s been well over a decade, and I’m comfortable now to say it. I lost four babies before 12 weeks of pregnancy, and I can tell you it is agonising. Part of you wants to tell people. Part of you knows the hugs and the consoling would only make it harder. And under all of it sits one question: will I ever have a child?

Those early losses are very hard to get over. I went on to have two children, and knowing I would be a mother was my saving grace. Not everyone gets that.

Knowing how hard those early losses were, I can’t imagine losing a baby later. You get through those uncertain first months. You start to think, yes, we’ve got this. Then your baby is stillborn, or dies soon after birth.

For the families who have been through that, I almost don’t know what to say.

So when I heard about a Lane Cove photographer who has spent years creating keepsakes for those families, and never charges them a cent, it was one of the most remarkable things I’d ever heard. She calls it a gift. This is her story.

Most people in Lane Cove know Marie Ramos as the photographer behind countless newborn portraits and tiny ceramic handprints. Far fewer know about Oliver’s Gift.

Around six babies are stillborn in Australia every day, according to Red Nose. For the parents, the time they have with their baby is often a matter of hours. Marie has spent much of her career helping them hold on to something from those hours.

It is not work she talks about much. “I’ve always preferred to hide behind my work and my camera,” she wrote when her book Heart Led came out in 2024.

It started with Oliver

In 2009 Marie met Tanya Jeney, a client expecting her second child. The pregnancy had complications and Tanya asked Marie to photograph her bump. At the time Marie was developing a way to capture babies’ hands and feet in clay, and she offered to do the same for Tanya’s baby once he arrived.

Oliver Jeney died shortly after he was born. Marie met him and took his imprints in soft earthenware clay. She has since described that small act of kindness as the beginning of her Baby Imprints business. Tanya became one of her closest friends.

Oliver’s tile was the very first Marie ever made. She shaped it by hand with no rolling pin or clay cutter, which is why it has such a natural, organic shape.

“It should be a gift”

Marie writes that every year she works with several families who have experienced the loss of a child. Each time, she came back to the same feeling.

On 21 May 2021 she made it official. Oliver’s Gift was launched at Burnt Orange in Mosman in front of 100 guests, as a permanent part of her business. Through the studio’s own fundraising, bereaved families receive her imprints and photography services free of charge. Tanya spoke at the launch about her own experience, alongside Sam Bloom, whose story was told in the book and film Penguin Bloom.

From a hospice to the hospital bedside

Marie traces this side of her work back to her university days, when she volunteered at a hospice. She says that experience led her to capture memories for bereaved families as well as for new ones.

It isn’t only babies. In 2023 she was called to a palliative care hospital to take the imprints of a young mother who was dying of brain cancer, and later raised $10,000 for her son’s education. Her 2024 book Heart Led tells these stories for the first time, including her experiences capturing the end of life as well as the beginning. Proceeds from the book went to the same fundraiser.

A lifetime of giving back

Marie started out at 19, working from a spare room in her parents’ house as a freelance photographer visiting homes around Sydney. She opened her first studio in Leichhardt in 2007 and moved to Centennial Avenue in Lane Cove West in April 2018.

She has fundraised for almost as long. Her first project in 2010 was a photographic exhibition that raised $10,000 for an orphanage in Thailand. In 2014 her book Love Mum raised $10,000 for the Miracle Babies Foundation, a cause close to her after her own daughter was born premature and spent time in a neonatal intensive care unit.

In 2017 she took a year off to create “Connie’s Heart” for the charity Love Your Sister, an artwork made from 2,025 ceramic fingerprint hearts. It is 10 metres long, raised $111,000 for cancer research and hangs permanently at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Darlinghurst.

By her own count, her business has donated close to $200,000 to causes and charities since it began.

Marie shared a few words for this story.

If you know a family who may need Oliver’s Gift, now or in the future, Marie asks that you contact her Lane Cove studio on 02 9418 8703.

If this story has brought up difficult feelings

• Red Nose (Sands is now part of Red Nose) offers free support to anyone affected by pregnancy loss, stillbirth or the death of a baby. 24/7 support line: 1300 308 307, or visit rednose.org.au
• Bears of Hope provides pregnancy and infant loss support: bearsofhope.org.au
• Oliver’s Gift enquiries: Marie Ramos Photography, 57 Centennial Ave, Lane Cove West, 02 9418 8703